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Light silken curtain, colorless and soft,
Dreamlike before me floating! what abides
Behind thy pearly veil's
Opaque, mysterious woof?


Where sleek red kine, and dappled, crunch day-long...

A sweat-dripping horse and a half-naked myall,
And a message: 'Come out to the back of the run
Be out at the stake-yards by rising of sun!
Ride hard and fail not! there's the devil to pay:...

When merry milkmaids to their cattle call
At evenfall
And voices range
Loud through the gloam from grange to quiet grange,

Wild waif-songs from long distant lands and loves,
Like migrant doves,...

I had no cause to be awake,
My best was gone to sleep,
And morn a new politeness took,
And failed to wake them up,

But called the others clear,
And passed their curtains by....

The Master's voice was sweet:
"I gave My life for thee;
Bear thou this cross thro' pain and loss,
Arise and follow Me."
I clasped it in my hand --
O Thou! who diedst for me,...

There was no one like 'im, 'Orse or Foot,
Nor any o' the Guns I knew;
An' because it was so, why, o' course 'e went an' died,
Which is just what the best men do.
...

Follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow!
Though thou be black as night,
And she made all of light,
Yet follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow!

Follow her, whose light thy light depriveth!...

Follow your saint, follow with accents sweet;
Haste you, sad notes, fall at her flying feet.
There, wrapp'd in cloud of sorrow, pity move,
And tell the ravisher of my soul I perish for her love:...

(For A. K. K.)



What distant mountains thrill and glow
Beneath our Lady Folly's tread?
Why has she left us, wise in woe,
Shrewd, practical, uncomforted?
We cannot love or dream or sing,...

O youth, beside thy silver-springing fountain,
In sight and hearing of thy father's cot,
These and the morning woods, the lonely mountain,
These are thy peace, although thou know'st it not....

I.

Thrice, at the huts of Fontenoy, the English column failed,
And twice the lines of Saint Antoine the Dutch in vain assailed;
For town and slope were filled with fort and flanking battery,...

When on my bosom thy bright eyes,
Florinda, dart their heavenly beams,
I feel not the least love surprise,
Yet endless tears flow down in streams;
There's nought so beautiful in thee,...

If to her eyes' bright lustre I were blind,

No longer would they serve my life to gild.

The will of destiny must be fulfilid,
This knowing, I withdrew with sadden'd mind.
...

Ther's some born fooils, an' ther's some mak thersen fooils, an'. ther's some get made fooils on. When we hear fowk tell tales abaat sein' boggards, an gettin' ther planets ruled, we think it saands fooilish. Nah an' then one t...

Seems lak folks is mighty curus
In de way dey t'inks an' ac's.
Dey jes' spen's dey days a-mixin'
Up de t'ings in almanacs.
Now, I min' my nex' do' neighbour,--
He's a mighty likely man,...

What a silly bobolink,
Down in the meadow grasses!
What can the noisy fellow think,
When, to everyone who passes,
He calls out cheerily,
"Here, here is my nest! See! see!"
...

Waking in the night to pray,
Sleeping when the answer comes,
Foolish are we even at play--
Tearfully we beat our drums!
Cast the good dry bread away,
Weep, and gather up the crumbs!
...

In's Tusc'lans, Tully doth confess,
No plague there's like to foolishness.

The Allans o' Airlie they set muckle store
On ancestry, acres, and siller,
Nor cared to remember the good days of yore,
Nor grandfather Allan, the miller -
The honest old miller.
...

I have been, like Puck, I have been, in a trice,
To a realm they call Fool's Paradise,
Lying N.N.E. of the Land of Sense,
And seldom blest with a glimmer thence.
But they wanted not in this happy place,...